The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission gave the NEXUS Gas Transmission pipeline a green light Wednesday to proceed with construction.

FERC approved the pipeline this summer but had not signed off on construction plans until Wednesday.

NEXUS is expected to begin constructing its $2.1 billion natural gas pipeline within a month.

The 255-mile pipeline will originate in Hanover Township in Columbiana County. It will travel through Stark, Summit and Wayne counties before proceeding through Medina and Lorain counties on the way to the Toledo area, into Michigan and then to a hub in Canada.

“After more than three years of public and agency review, we are pleased to have received this authorization from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to proceed with construction activities in Ohio and Michigan. This receipt marks another key milestone that authorizes the project to commence construction activities in the days ahead and keeps the project on track to meet its targeted in-service late in the third quarter of 2018,” company spokesman Adam Parker wrote in an email.

This timeline would apply to Medina County, he wrote.

“We have obtained 97 percent of the necessary (rights) of way through voluntary and cooperative negotiations and continue to work with landowners to obtain the remaining easements,” Parker wrote.

York Township resident Paul Gierosky, a leader of the Coalition to Re-route NEXUS, or CORN, spoke out against Wednesday’s decision.

In an email, he wrote, FERC, by issuing Wednesday’s order to proceed, “once again demonstrated … its utter contempt for property owners and their Constitutional Rights. …”

A lawsuit filed by 60 landowners to stop the pipeline was still pending Wednesday before Judge John Adams of the Federal Court of the Northern District of Ohio in Akron.

FERC’s approval while the lawsuit is pending is, Gierosky wrote, “A blatant disrespect of the Federal Courts and the rule of law.”

The Medina County portion of the pipeline will include construction of a compressor station in Guilford Township. The station will be built to help propel gas through the 36-inch diameter pipe.

NEXUS, first proposed in August 2014, is a business partnership of Detroit-based DTE Energy and Spectra Energy, which is owned by Calgary, Alberta-based Enbridge Inc.